Porcupine Ridge ouroboros

It had started as a simple chase, a frenzied pursuit of small game near the edges of the territory. Never would those steps have been taken had he known what lie ahead.

Slipping, stumbling, sending brush and pebbles skittering downwards along with him—into the shadowed abyss of an alpine crevasse, with only the barest sliver of light to be had overhead.

Night came, and then day again.

Hex looked for a path upward and found no trail but descent, into the belly of the mountains. Darker it became, and darker still, a stygian black that seemed to bely the very existence of the sun.

Night came, and day again—but he wouldn't know it.

---

There were ancient things in the tunnels. Pale, rippling indents in the rock, remnants of ribcages of creatures long, long dead. Echoes of the past, a dull, aching whisper through the caverns.

Each step he took fell in harmony with the quiet pit-pat of water upon cold stone.

The shadow boy had never known such emptiness and monotony.

Day to night; day to night. Soon days blended together, and then perhaps weeks.

Moons? Years?!

---

"Witch."

When the hunger pangs ebbed, the spectral figures descended upon him, pale and dancing like morning mist.

Witch,

mage,

Mayfair blight.

The deep-set dread of his birthright, humming in his bones;

Hex did not feel the ground upon which he walked. He did not sense the walls closing in around him. Existence shrank to a singular point upon which he meditated.

If he gave into the ghosts, he knew they would take him away.

Still, they whispered.

---

Who am I?

What am I?

WHY am I?

It was Hex and his ancestors, now, walking alongside him in the endless maze he surmised to be hell. He'd died, falling down that slope; he had no doubt of it.

Now all that remained to be seen was how long this would last.

How long his torture would go on;

And for what?

"The madness," he whispered to himself, breath fogging in the frigid air.

Madness, agreed the spirits.

Hex did not fear hell, for he'd already lived it on Earth. Hell was pain, anguish, abandonment—and here he felt nothing at all.

so where am i now?

---

That singular point? It grew, eventually, into a tiny tongue of flame, and then a starburst of light—

A small opening in the mountain, covered by thorny bushes and dusty, jagged rocks. He pushed through, heedless of the snagging at his pelt, the ungainly slipping of his gait.

Dead man walking. . .onto the northeast edge of the ridge he had once dared to claim.

But that was yesterday—no, hundreds of yesterdays ago.

Today?

He was little more than a pile of unkempt skin and bones as he sagged back upon his haunches, his gold eyes devoid of anything feeling.

@Muskrat @Nutuyikruk